Ballots were mailed on Wednesday for the City of Bend Motor Vehicle Fuel Tax, Measure 9-105, a five cents-per-gallon tax on gasoline that would be dedicated to road repairs and improvements in Bend.
A city fuel tax is not a new concept in Oregon, where state and federal funding for roads has stayed stagnant for two decades. There are 24 cities in Oregon with a gas tax, ranging from one cent in Newport to three cents in Sisters and five cents in Eugene. It makes sense that Bend, a city of fewer than 100,000 residents, would help fund roads through a tax that shares the burden with the city’s 2 million annual tourists.
The timing of the ballot is intended to allow Bend to have the fuel tax in place prior to the peak tourism of the spring and summer months. According to Visit Bend, there are 1.4 to 1.7 million visitor trips to Bend from May to October, and 1.8 million to 2.2 million annually (based on the hotel census for Bend, 2008 – 2010). Bend’s tourism grows and grows while funding for road maintenance from the state and federal government does not. The result is mounting deferred maintenance, estimated to be $80 million, according to an independent consultant’s report from 2013.
Two opponents of the gas tax on the Bend City Council include Victor Chudowsky and Casey Roats, who voted against sending the proposal to the ballot in March. Chudowsky points to the ongoing problem at the state level, where a reliance on taxes for roads has led to ever-more taxes, growing from nine cents per gallon in 1985 to 30 cents per gallon today. Furthermore, Oregon’s shortfall for roads will continue due to flat or declining revenue as fuel efficiency steadily improves.
“I totally agree more money has to be spent on streets,” says Chudowsky. “However, putting in a local gas tax would be replicating the state’s failure.” He says a better option would be to allocate differently the tourism tax money that the city already receives through room taxes. He notes the Bend tourism boom is expected to continue; four new hotels are currently under construction, and revenue is growing faster than expected. “Growth should pay for itself,” he says.
Prior to the March 8 special election, the City of Bend will hold an informational open house on Monday, Feb. 29 at City Hall (710 NW Wall Street). City Manager Eric King will talk about the city’s finances and the city’s finance director and streets and operations director will answer questions about the deterioration of the street conditions and proposed solutions.
The tax would bring more money into the city’s general fund to be allocated to road repair costs, avoiding cuts that would come from other parts of the budget. With more than 2 million visitors to Bend who use city resources and the roads, this is a win-win for the city. Vote yes on Measure 9-105.
This article appears in Feb 17-24, 2016.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
OK – Here’s the deal. The city is dropping $75,000 on a single issue election. The excuse is that by doing it now instead of the May election where they could add the proposal to the ballot at little or no cost and wouldn’t need to spend the $75K is that they will get added revenue from the busy summer season. A cursory look at the calendar shows that even if they wait until the May election they would have plenty of time to get things in place before schools let out and things get busy. The problem is that if they put it on the May ballot there will be tons of anti-tax republicans voting in the GOP Presidential primary. That means the chance of the tax passing will be very small. They are spending $75,000 of your tax dollars to maximize the chances of this bill passing. It is that simple.
Should we trust the politicians? They set up the budget last summer. There were a lot more funds available thanks to the improving economy. Pretty much every department got an increased budget EXCEPT for road repairs. Why? Either they did not recognize the problems with the roads (incompetence) or they figured they’d be getting the extra money through this tax so they left things as unfunded as possible and spent the money elsewhere (cynical political maneuvering). Either way this is not good governance.
The people of Bend should vote NO on this to send a message to the politicians that we’re not going to put up with this kind of sneaky behavior. They’re hoping for a very small turnout where the more interested YES votes will show up and the rest of the folks won’t know about the election or will be too lazy to vote. Voting for this tax will only encourage them to waste more of your money on future special elections on issues where they fear the majority of the voters would vote against whatever it is they are proposing.
Don’t let them get away with it.
If you check out the video provided you’ll see the politicos talk about this measure being put on the March 8 ballot. That’s extremely misleading. There was no March 8 ballot until the city decide to drop $75,000 to create it for this one issue. They’re not being honest with you.
They also talked about moving other funds to help with road repairs. They didn’t mention WHEN that happened. It didn’t happen when they did the budget last summer. When they did the budget last summer they increased funding for pretty much every department other than road repairs which they left at current levels.
Check this out for yourselves and see if they are being straight forward about this. They aren’t.
The Voters of Bend should vote YES on this because we don’t want big oil and gas & other selfish interests telling us how to spend our money on a local issue that means far more to us (the community of Bend) then it does to them.
Let the tourists pay for it, or post a tax on those who move here from out of state and don’t respect our land. Who make it hard for bikers to commute anymore, and raise the price of rent,so others can’t afford to have any increases whatsoever because their just getting by. Raise the cost of changing their vehicle plates at the dmv. Do you get the jest??
NO – The City of Bend seems to have plenty of money / budget for studies, law suits and development plans while saying they don’t have enough to actually do one of their most basic functions. If the city couldn’t afford to hire new staff, buy any new vehicles or pay for pet projects I would believe that there is a need to raise more funding. However that is just not the case. The City of Bend is on a spending spree (New staff in many departments, $600k for sewage lawsuit, $500k+ for parking study, $300k+ for Galveston design, discussing a new city hall, $300K+ for Interceptor vehicles, $70K on special election, new traffic circles, $300K on helicopter operations area design & tree clearing, $580K for water law suit, $1.2 million for 10 ambulances, there are many more). This shows a lack of prioritization and frugality the people of Bend deserve.
Really disappointed in the source taking the yes side and not reporting in this article that even though the 2 million tourists visiting Bend would help pay for our roads via the proposed tax, they fail to report that the tourist total contribution would amount to a paltry 25% of the funds the tax hopes to generate. 75% of the burden will be on the people who live in and around Bend.
I laughed my ass off when I got a piece of literature in the mail from a Republican, opposing the gas tax…the piece of junk mail cited the negative impact this tax would have on the poor. ha ha ha ha ha! Since when have Republicans given a hoot about the poor?…oh yeah, they mention the poor a lot when they blame them for sucking away taxpayer dollars through entitlements and welfare and when crime comes up as well. When Republicans claim to be champions of the poor…I smell a rat.
Republicans are really good at saying “no” without having any real alternative. Like healthcare reform…yeah, you can hate the Affordable Care Act all you want…but has the GOP ever come up with any viable healthcare reform proposals in the last 10 years? or the 10 years before that? nope.
And just saying the money for road repairs should come from somewhere else? okay…where else exactly would that come from in this town with a limited tax base? increase property taxes? yeah..that’ll go over like a lead brick. someone gonna plant some magic beans? Tax people w/ studded tires and vehicles that weigh over 2 tons?
I’m voting YES. You gotta pay to play.
City Council needs to do its job and either vote yes or no for a gas tax instead of shifting the responsibility to the voters who voted to put them in office to make decisions on their behalf! Vote NO on this gas tax and then vote them all out. I’m furious.
A big thanks to Channel 21, The Bulletin and Source Weekly for keeping this election in the public eye. The end result was that over 58% of eligible voters voted and the city’s attempt to sneak this past the voters failed miserably.
Now city government can go back and try to come up with a real solution. It’s too bad they wasted $75,000 on this election. Hopefully they will learn from this and not try to sneak these types of things past the voters in the future.
It is a fair question to ask City Counsel – what is plan B? You guys put this up for a vote. What did you plan to do if the vote didn’t go your way?